Coolest Tool Award 2026

Knowledge grows through contributions and contributions are powered by people and the tools that support them. Across Wikimedia, developers and volunteers are building technology that simplifies complexity, removes barriers, and helps more people turn curiosity into contribution. Last year, the winning projects were AbuseFilter Analyzer, Database Report, [music] and Paulina. They helped communities navigate moderation more effectively, demonstrated the power of evolving infrastructure, and expanded the boundaries of what a Wikimedia tool could be. This year, we celebrate even more innovation. Today, we recognize the tools making participation more intuitive, more accessible, and more impactful for contributors around [music] the world. Welcome to the 2026 Coolest Tool Award. >> [music] >> This year's greatest service to the community award goes to Lexica, a mobile-friendly contribution tool created by Wiki Collaps in Indonesia under the Software Collaboration for Wikidata framework in collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland. Contributing lexicographical data on Wikidata can be challenging, especially on mobile devices. Editing often requires contributors to understand concepts such as lexemes, senses, forms, and Wikidata's editing structure. Lexica simplifies this process by turning specialized editing tasks into guided activities. Using a card-based interface, contributors can link lexeme senses to Wikidata items, add script variants, and contribute hyphenation data. Each activity focuses on a single task, making edits easier to understand, review, and complete. Contributors can preview changes before submitting them or skip a task if they are unsure. Designed with a mobile-first approach, Lexica makes it possible to contribute wherever and whenever it is convenient. [music] Tasks take only moments to complete, making participation more accessible. The tool has been improved through collaboration between Wiki Labs, Wikimedia Deutschland, and volunteers across the Wikimedia movement. Community members have helped test features, provide feedback, contribute translations, and expand language support. By making lexicographical editing more approachable, Lexica helps more contributors participate in building and improving Wikidata's lexical data, one small edit at a time. Lexica helps contributors make small, guided contributions to Wikidata lexicographical [music] data. To get started, sign in with your Wikimedia account. Lexica uses Wikimedia's authorization system, so it never sees or stores your login credentials. It only receives permission to make the edits you choose. Choose from dozens of supported languages and select an activity. In lexeme to item, contributors review a lexeme card, compare suggested Wikidata items, confirm the correct match, preview the edit, and submit it. In script variants, contributors add alternative written forms for languages that use multiple scripts through a guided workflow. In hyphenation, contributors divide words into syllables, adding structured word segmentation data to Wikidata. As with every activity, contributors can review changes before submitting or skip a card if they're uncertain. Each contribution takes only moments. >> [music] >> Together, these small edits improve the quality and completeness of Wikidata's lexicographical data. Congratulations to the Lexica team for winning the 2026 Coolest Tool Award for greatest service to the community. >> Hello everyone. I'm Rachel from Wiki Labs, the team behind Lexica. We are very grateful for Wikimedia Deutschland for all the help and also especially for all community members who help us translate Lexica, give us feedback, and also use [music] the tool. Thank you so much, everyone. >> This year's most innovative awards goes to Micro Task Generator, created by Mercy Oyelakin, a software developer and open-source contributor from Lagos, Nigeria. Powered by Wikimedia machine learning models, Micro Task Generator helps contributors discover editing tasks related to the articles, topics, or countries they care about most. Instead of asking contributors to sift through large amounts of information, the tool surfaces actionable opportunities where help is needed most. A missing citation, a page needing improvement, or another valuable task. What makes the tool impactful is the experience it creates. Micro Task Generator does not simply recommend edits. It explains why those edits matter for Wikipedia's quality, reliability, and growth. In doing so, it lowers barriers for newer editors while helping [music] experienced contributors focus their efforts more effectively. The project was developed by Mercy Oyelakin during Outreach Year Round [music] 31 at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she worked on tools that helped organizers and contributors discover quick improvements across Wikipedia. Her work reflects an important vision for Wikimedia's future, one where machine learning and human collaboration work together to strengthen participation, not replace it. Every day, thousands of Wikipedia articles could be improved, but finding where to start can be a challenge. That is where the Micro Task Generator comes in. Let's say you are an editor, organizer, or someone preparing for an edit-a-thon. Enter a Wikipedia language code and either provide a list of articles or select a topic to explore. Within seconds, the tool analyzes those articles and generates recommended editing tasks. For each article, contributors can view metrics [music] such as quality scores, page views, translation coverage, and editing [music] activity. More importantly, the tool identifies exactly what each article needs. An article may be missing references. It may need images, an infobox, stronger [music] categories, or additional content. Selecting an article opens a breakdown showing where improvements are needed and [music] how much progress has already been made. Recommendations connect directly to Wikimedia help documentation, [music] making it easier to learn common editing tasks. The tool can also sort and filter results by topic, geography, popularity, or task type, helping organizers build focused work lists for campaigns and edit-a-thons. If you do not already have articles in mind, Microtask Generator can generate recommendations directly from a category. Choose a topic, select the number of articles to analyze, and the tool creates a tailored list automatically. [music] Results can be exported or copied as wikitext, making it easy to share assignments, track progress, and measure impact. With Microtask Generator, contributors can spend less time searching for tasks. Congratulations to Mercy Olatunji for winning the 2026 [music] Coolest Tool Award for Most Innovative. >> Hello everyone. My name is Mercy Oyelakin from Nigeria. I'm a software developer and open source contributor. I would like to say thank you to the Wikimedia community for the recognition of my tool, the Microtask Generator, as one of the winners of the Coolest Tool Award for this year 2026 in the Innovative category. >> This year's Most Evolved Award goes to CodeMirror, developed by BHSD or Harry, alongside collaborators across the Wikimedia technical community. [music] CodeMirror brings a modern IDE-like editing experience to Wikimedia projects, making [music] complex wiki editing faster, clearer, and easier to navigate. >> [music] >> As contributors edit, syntax highlighting visually separates templates, links, references, and code structures, transforming dense markup into something far more readable and intuitive. Auto-completion helps editors quickly insert links, templates, and tags without memorizing complex syntax, while auto-closing brackets and tags help prevent formatting mistakes before they happen. >> [music] >> At the same time, real-time linting surfaces errors and potential issues as contributors type, helping editors catch problems before publishing changes. Features such as code folding, bracket matching, and multi-cursor editing make even larger, technically demanding pages feel more manageable. Supporting WikiText, Lua, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, and more, CodeMirror creates a more seamless editing experience across Wikimedia projects. [music] What makes CodeMirror especially impactful is its flexibility. Features such as syntax highlighting, auto-completion, linting, and search can be enabled or disabled independently, allowing contributors to tailor the editing experience to their needs. That experience [music] is the result of years of collaborative work, building on contributions from earlier developers, coordination from MusicAnimal, and the integration of the CodeMirror 6 library. The project reflects the collaborative spirit of Wikimedia development, where improvements are refined through community feedback and shared technical expertise. Together, they created more than an editor upgrade. They built infrastructure that helps people participate more confidently in the creation of free knowledge. We'll start in the 2010 WikiText [music] editor. CodeMirror can be enabled directly from the Wiki editor toolbar. Once activated, syntax highlighting makes templates, links, references, and other markup easier to read and navigate. Different elements are visually distinguished, helping contributors understand page structure at a glance. >> [music] >> From the same menu, contributors can access CodeMirror settings, open the full preferences dialog, or explore keyboard shortcuts. As editing begins, CodeMirror starts assisting in real time. When it detects a potential [music] issue, the built-in linter highlights it immediately. In this example, CodeMirror identifies duplicate attribute before the editor saves, allowing the contributor to correct the issue before it reaches readers. Next, as we begin typing a tag, autocomplete offers suggestions for tags, internal links, and other commonly used syntax. >> [music] >> Once selected, the matching closing tag is inserted automatically, helping reduce repetitive typing and formatting errors. CodeMirror also makes navigation easier. By holding control, or command on macOS, contributors can click [music] links and templates directly from the editor and open them in a new tab. >> [music] >> Now, let's switch to template styles. CodeMirror improvements extend beyond WikiText. Support for other Wikimedia editing environments has also been enhanced with features such as code folding, autocomplete, syntax highlighting, and linting, providing a more efficient experience across languages and workflows. Whether editing WikiText, [music] CSS, or Lua, CodeMirror helps contributors work more efficiently by providing the right assistance [music] at the right moment, making complex editing faster, clearer, and more intuitive. Congratulations to [music] BHSD, Music Animal, and all the contributors behind Code Mirror for winning the 2026 Coolest Tool Award for most evolved. >> [music] [music]